The sunsets are woven into the sand –
wait for me where the coast is wet with dusk.
Sunlight retreating gleefully across the surface will tell you that I am ready to be found.
Listen closely to the starfish at twilight:
I have told them each to roar for you,
and the oceans always heed my will.
From them, you will know where to stand as the beach fire blossoms.
Wait until dawn rushes the sky,
a phoenix rising from its early morning ashes
painting rosy nothings on the clouds with a trembling finger.
You shall not move from your place until the sunfire has eaten the sand and cast long shadows in its wake –
you will be safe where you stand, but only there.
When the flames die down, it is time to run –
straight into the waves, where the starfish called and the sunlight beckoned.
Run with weights on your ankles and feathers in your heart
and do not look back, for the scorching sand is not kind
to those who let it burn.
When your bubbles slow, you will find me there:
a photo pressed into greened gold,
tarnished not by time or the cruelty of the sea
but the abandonment that you let bloom
when you left me to drown in these waters.
You’ve returned!- and I will not let you go again.
They will find you at dusk –
a sweet irony, for you brought the sun –
I was always the one to banish it back into the stars when nighttime fell.
You found me, or I found you, and they will find you too,
with my tarnished hands looped around your neck.
Another dawn, another dusk,
and I am holding you to me, at long last.